


Commencement Means Beginning

by 2ndA



Series: Work That is Real (GK/HS AU) [3]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Teachers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5574397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndA/pseuds/2ndA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More High school AU.  acchikocchi requested a timestamp for my GK/High school AU, How to Take a Test (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1150945): "Graduation and/or end-of-the-year results at Mathilda Memorial High School, perhaps? Or: Ray comes back to visit post-graduation. Or a combination of the above".  And of course it quickly grew beyond any comment limit on LJ. The epigraph comes from Gary Whitehead's excellent poem (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2010/05/18).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commencement Means Beginning

_one summer, one year, when you were young._

  
  
Graduation practice is the first time Nate even lays eyes on the valedictorian of the 52 nd Mathilda Memorial High School Commencement Exercises.  The kids who end up in his test prep classes are not really valedictorian material.  The salutatorian does look vaguely familiar, and eventually Nate places the name: two years ago, as a sophomore, she’d been a student in his very first Latin class.  
  
“How was her speech?”  Brad will ask, when Nate mentions it over dinner.  And Nate will say he doesn’t know, didn’t listen.  He’ll brush it off: “After all, I was accepted to a school where the graduate salutation is given _entirely in_ _Latin_.”  
  
Brad will roll his eyes: “You got called away to break up a fight, didn’t you?”  
  
“I had to alphabetize the caps and gowns, actually.” Nate doesn’t mention that there _had_ been a fight (started when one student literally stepped on someone else’s toes during the processional).  He doesn’t have to: he’s been part of the MMHS graduation committee for four years now, and Brad knows they’ve never had a graduation practice without bloodshed.  
  
Truth to tell, Nate was glad to leave auditorium to Mrs. Hummeld, drama-teacher-turned-graduation-coordinator.  Sure, it meant returning to the sweltering trailer that was his classroom and sifting through polyester rental gowns and flimsy mortarboards.  But for some reason he always finds graduation practice oddly poignant.  On the day of the actual event, he’ll be run off his feet, herding students, handing out programs, taping cheap polyester seams, bobby-pinning those same goddamned mortarboards.  The kids will all be proud and confident, in their best clothes and on their best behavior.  He’ll barely recognize the awkward teenagers he used to know.  He'll spend the day wishing it were already over.  But practice, seeing them all still in sneakers and t-shirts, still children, a little confused, waiting for a teacher’s directions (where to stand, when to walk, "shake with your right hand, diploma in your left")... Nate had retreated to his classroom, turned on the fan, and picked up a stack of gowns.  It doesn’t bear thinking about.

 

++++

  
He’s sorting through the M's ( _Michael, R.; Michael, T.; Michaels; Michaelson…_ ), checking things off the rental invoice, when he hears a voice that takes him back to his very first day in this classroom.  
  
“Yo, don’t _tell_ me they still don’t got no AC up in this bitch?”             
                         
Nate looks up.  Ray’s filled out a little and his hair is a lot shorter, but in board shorts and a ragged shirt advertising a band Nate’s never heard of, he could be his younger self.  He hovers on the doorway, not sure if he’s allowed to come in.  Nate wants to tell him he’ll be welcome whether he’s a student or not, but Ray gets prickly about the strangest things.  So instead, he sighs: “Language, Ray!”  
  
Ray grins, all hesitation gone, and bounces in.  He scrapes a chair across the floor, straddles it, and immediately starts pawing through Nate’s neatly alphabetized piles. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding in the least bit apologetic. “I meant, don’t tell me they still don’t got no AC up in this _fiiine_ lady?”  He slaps the wall of the trailer, then strokes the old _How to Take A Test_ poster lewdly, eyebrows wiggling.  “She knows I love her,” he stage whispers to Nate.  
  
“I meant the double negatives, not the profanity,” Nate says, but he can’t help smiling.  
  
(Might’ve been love, might’ve been hero-worship, but it cannot be denied that Ray spent two weeks one summer helping Brad paint and rewire most of the trailer.  A year ago, Principal Mattis finally offered Nate a real classroom _inside_ the school building, but Nate turned him down.  It’s surprising what you can get used to.)  
  
Ray’s already back on his feet, prowling the bookshelves.  He picks up a random copy of the _Iliad._ “Heard you finally got your Latin class,” he remarks, which surprises Nate.  Kids sometimes come back to Mathilda that first Thanksgiving break, before they really have college friends and college lives.  But he hasn’t seen or heard from Ray since the kid walked across that stage years ago, shook with his right hand, took the diploma with his left.  He wonders where Ray gets his information. Is Nate’s Latin class a hot topic on Facebook?  
  
“Yeah,” Nate says, “A few years ago.  Finally got enough kids passing the California Standards Test.  And once I didn’t have you on the debate team, my schedule just opened right up.”  
  
“Bull _shit_ ,” snorts Ray.  “You know Forensics has just gone right downhill without your top talker, Ray-Ray!”  
  
“Well, it certainly hasn’t been the same, I’ll give you that,” Nate concedes.  
  
There are a few moments of quiet, just the distant sound of music from the rehearsal and the _click-click-whir_ of Nate’s cheap fan.  
  
“Will you be here for graduation?”  asks Nate. “It’s on Tuesday.”  It’s been three years; most of the kids Ray knew will be gone by now, but why else would he suddenly reappear?  
  
“Naw, I’m just in town through the weekend.  Seeing some folks—Walt says hi, by the way—and, you know, just using up some leave.”  Ray keeps flipping through the _Iliad_ , but now his new haircut makes sense.  And that new physical solidity, more than just outgrowing his stringbean teenage clumsiness.  
  
“Leave?”  Nate asks, just to be sure.  
  
Ray looks up from the book, meeting Nate's eyes straight for the first time. “From the Marines.  I, uh, after school, I joined the Marines. And now I’m going out for this squad—they’re pretty elite, like really bad-ass, it’s kind of like a promotion… If I get in, I mean.  So, I’m just here, you know, for now.”  
  
There are a more revolutions of the fan while Nate decides what to say. _Of course you’ll get in_ , is the polite, automatic response, but he knows that’s not true. He knows from Brad that the military is not always a meritocracy.  _What happened to all those college recommendation letters I wrote you?_ is a close second.  It seems ridiculous that Ray—Ray, who used to sleep in the back of Nate’s homeroom and who couldn’t eat a single meal in the cafeteria without _wearing_ it for the rest of the day— _Ray_ is being entrusted with the securing American interests abroad.  And under the patent absurdity is a faint tinge of worry.  Nate is a bit of a policy wonk, and he knows policies need teeth.  He and Mr. Espera have had many “polite disagreements” over this subject at the coffee pot in the teacher’s lounge, with Nate maintaining that the US needs to back up its beliefs with firepower.  Joining the Marines, an elite squad…Nate can predict where Ray will end up. Why does the tip of the spear have to be someone Nate _knows_ , someone Nate has spent such time and patience teaching?  
  
Nate looks at Ray, fidgeting with the book like for once he’s sorry he opened his mouth.  From across the football field, he can hear _Pomp and Circumstance_.  Teaching means getting kids onto the stage, pointing them in the right direction, and then letting them walk across it on their own.  As they must, eventually.  
  
“I have every confidence in you,” Nate says finally.  It’s what he told Shelly Tribble when she had a panic attack in homeroom about the casting of the school musical; it’s what he told Antoinne Powell after proof-reading his college application essay. It’s what he tells all his test prep classes right before they sit for the state standardized test. 

It’s true: it’s always true.  
  
“Yeah?”  Ray looks disbelieving.  
  
“You’re a hard worker, Ray, and God knows you never give up.  The Marines could do a lot worse.”  
  
Ray scrunches up his face, screws his eyes closed,  like even faint praise is more than he can take.  And then his bravado is back, “Yeah, that’s what I think.  If they don’t take me, maybe I’ll, like, sue.  For gross misuse of military resources or something.  Or racism.  Or…what was that thing they did when dumbasses kept getting burnt by McDonald’s coffee? Didn’t somebody sue over that?”  
  
Nate lets Ray rattle on for a moment while he tries to make up his mind.  Two years ago, he gave up the lease on his apartment and moved into Brad’s bungalow in Oceanside.  The long commute gives him quiet time to think about his lesson plans and Mathilda’s a desert—Brad would never be happy so far from the ocean.  Plus, Nate admits to himself, he likes that he and Brad can go running together, grocery shopping; they can bring a picnic to the beach, hold hands on the boardwalk.  He doesn’t worry about running into his students or their families, about having to explain himself, his life.  He’s not sure he wants to sacrifice that, even for Ray.  
  
Before he can think better of it, Nate walks to the back of the room, picks up Ray’s book, and jots a number on the title page with the pen he was using to check off rental gowns.  
  
“Remember Brad? You should give him a call,” he says.  “He used to be in the Marines.”  
  
“But—”  Ray pauses, shocked.  
  
“The tech grant that paid him is finished now, but he lives in Oceanside.  You could drive up over the weekend. I bet he’d talk to you if you had any questions.  Call him.”  
  
“But, sir…”  
  
“ _What,_ Ray?” Nate really hopes he doesn’t have to spell out why he has Brad’s number memorized, why he knows Brad’s living situation.  
  
“It’s just…”  Ray holds up the book so Nate can see the stamp on the inside cover: PROPERTY OF MATHILDA MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL.  
  
“Well,” Nate says, “you’ll just have to take good care of that.  Make sure to bring it back, safe and sound.”

 

 

++++

After discussing graduation practice at dinner, Brad will reach around Nate to retrieve his plate, leaning down to drop a kiss on his temple.  Nate will smile absently.  
  
Brad will start in on the dishes.  As it gets darker outside, he’ll see Nate reflected more and more clearly in the kitchen window, just staring into space.  He always gets a little melancholy around graduation.  It’s one of his most endearing traits, how enmeshed he becomes in the lives of his students. Nate's talked about leaving education, going to grad school for something completely different, but Brad doesn't think it'll ever happen. Not while he calls his students “my kids,” not until he can remember that the new year starts in January and not September. But today seems different, even more bittersweet than June usually is.  
  
“So, an entire graduation practice and no concussions?”  Brad asks, finally.  
  
“I’m _shocked_ , Brad, shocked that you would even inquire.” Nate’s smile is a little more robust this time. “There was just a tiny little fistfight.”   He stands up, brings his glass to the sink. He believes Brad thinks about the kids at Mathilda more than anyone would suspect: Brad doesn't connect with people easily or frequently, but when he does, the connection is never really severed.  
  
Brad dunks the glass in soapy water. “Well, there’s still time—it was only practice.”  
  
Nate slips his hands around Brad’s waist, rests his head against Brad’s shoulder blade.  Breathes.   And then he says, “Hey, you’ll never guess who I ran into today…”


End file.
